energy of schoolchildren, careered ahead. Even in boots Cally could not keep up with them. And she could not keep up her usual rapid calorie-burning stride; she felt dazed, dizzied, either by the events of the day of her own end-of-day hunger. Warily she watched everything around her, half expecting the sparse traffic on Main Street to turn into an invading army, the plastic bunnies and flat-ceramic kissing Dutch kids and wooden propeller-wing ducks on the lawns to change before her helpless eyes into something horrific.
(Though in fact she found Hoadleyâs lawn kitsch horrible to start with. She did not much care either for the massive concrete paired lions and urns and three-tiered fountains with which Mark adorned the outside of the funeral home, but she was grateful that his sense of the dignity of the place kept him from decorating it with plastic pinwheel daisies.)
A few doors up street from the funeral home Sojourner Hieronymus was sitting on her front porch waiting for suppertime. Cally stopped to talk. She could not have gone by even if she had wanted to. A strict though tacit porch etiquette prevailed in Hoadley. In emergency cases of extreme hurry a person could hustle past with a flap of the hand or a shouted greeting, but an explanation was due afterward, and such cases had better not occur too often, or their perpetrator would be suspected of unfriendliness, liver problems and subversive sympathies. The accepted behavior was for children to stop and say hello respectfully before escaping about their own business, and for adults to stop and talk for at least five or ten minutes from the sidewalk or leaning on the porch railing, depending on the degree and warmth of the acquaintanceâbut never to presume actually to come up on the porch and sit down unless invited. The porch was an extension of the porch-sitterâs home, and was treated, like a foreign embassy, as a sovereign territory.
Cally would have stopped to speak with Sojourner Hieronymus in any event. She was interested in the old woman, if only because Sojourner kept no ceramic skunks, no whirligigs or cutout wooden tulips, no Mexican donkey planters or wire-legged flamingos or reflecting balls or pistachio-green seahorse birdbaths in her yard. She did not even plant petunias. The lines of her house, innocent of ornament, scrupulous and Heavenward-aspiring as the long lines of her face, rose austerely from her flat, clipped lawn. A broom and a shovel hung against the side of the house, on nails big enough to last. In front of the porch a small, smooth-raked, severely rectangular garden awaited three tomato plants in three tidy wire cages. The two porch chairs were of chilly metal many times painted. By the door stood a lean dapple-gray milk box. Cally appreciated Sojourner Hieronymus and her total lack of sugar-coating.
âGood evening,â she called.
The old woman looked gray all over, smooth prayer-bonneted hair, housedressâin fact the housedress was a faded, flowered blue, but it looked gray as old meat. Sojourner nodded and motioned toward the empty chair beside her. Cally came up and settled herself on the porch. The metal chair was of the sort with diamond-shaped cutouts and only two legs, in front, made of pipe bent to form a U-shaped stand rearward. It gave springily when sat upon, and could be jiggled to resemble a very staid amusement park ride. There should have been a metal glider to go with the chairs, but Sojourner had sold it.
âHow are you?â
âHow are you?â
Neither woman listened or answered. This ritual needed no response. Their eyes watched the children capering on the front sidewalk, clapping and calling to the friendly mutt who lived in the neighboring yard. Cally felt no temptation to tell Sojourner about the crazy perceptions that were troubling her. Sojourner would have listened; Sojourner was not self-centered on her own ailments and bodily functions as so many old people were. Nor, in
(Though in fact she found Hoadleyâs lawn kitsch horrible to start with. She did not much care either for the massive concrete paired lions and urns and three-tiered fountains with which Mark adorned the outside of the funeral home, but she was grateful that his sense of the dignity of the place kept him from decorating it with plastic pinwheel daisies.)
A few doors up street from the funeral home Sojourner Hieronymus was sitting on her front porch waiting for suppertime. Cally stopped to talk. She could not have gone by even if she had wanted to. A strict though tacit porch etiquette prevailed in Hoadley. In emergency cases of extreme hurry a person could hustle past with a flap of the hand or a shouted greeting, but an explanation was due afterward, and such cases had better not occur too often, or their perpetrator would be suspected of unfriendliness, liver problems and subversive sympathies. The accepted behavior was for children to stop and say hello respectfully before escaping about their own business, and for adults to stop and talk for at least five or ten minutes from the sidewalk or leaning on the porch railing, depending on the degree and warmth of the acquaintanceâbut never to presume actually to come up on the porch and sit down unless invited. The porch was an extension of the porch-sitterâs home, and was treated, like a foreign embassy, as a sovereign territory.
Cally would have stopped to speak with Sojourner Hieronymus in any event. She was interested in the old woman, if only because Sojourner kept no ceramic skunks, no whirligigs or cutout wooden tulips, no Mexican donkey planters or wire-legged flamingos or reflecting balls or pistachio-green seahorse birdbaths in her yard. She did not even plant petunias. The lines of her house, innocent of ornament, scrupulous and Heavenward-aspiring as the long lines of her face, rose austerely from her flat, clipped lawn. A broom and a shovel hung against the side of the house, on nails big enough to last. In front of the porch a small, smooth-raked, severely rectangular garden awaited three tomato plants in three tidy wire cages. The two porch chairs were of chilly metal many times painted. By the door stood a lean dapple-gray milk box. Cally appreciated Sojourner Hieronymus and her total lack of sugar-coating.
âGood evening,â she called.
The old woman looked gray all over, smooth prayer-bonneted hair, housedressâin fact the housedress was a faded, flowered blue, but it looked gray as old meat. Sojourner nodded and motioned toward the empty chair beside her. Cally came up and settled herself on the porch. The metal chair was of the sort with diamond-shaped cutouts and only two legs, in front, made of pipe bent to form a U-shaped stand rearward. It gave springily when sat upon, and could be jiggled to resemble a very staid amusement park ride. There should have been a metal glider to go with the chairs, but Sojourner had sold it.
âHow are you?â
âHow are you?â
Neither woman listened or answered. This ritual needed no response. Their eyes watched the children capering on the front sidewalk, clapping and calling to the friendly mutt who lived in the neighboring yard. Cally felt no temptation to tell Sojourner about the crazy perceptions that were troubling her. Sojourner would have listened; Sojourner was not self-centered on her own ailments and bodily functions as so many old people were. Nor, in
Similar Books
